


Time Enough

by magicandarchery



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-03 22:17:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6628801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicandarchery/pseuds/magicandarchery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She knows the hardest thing he’s needed to adjust to since the end of the War has been the concept of time. She knows that there’s never been a happy medium for him. It either drags on with no end in sight, or rushes past much too quickly for his liking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time Enough

**Author's Note:**

> This is another work of mine I wrote SEVERAL years ago and stumbled upon recently.

“Marry me?”

He asks as they walk through the orchard beside the Burrow, the full moon shining bright white above them, the night calm and cool, her birthday gathering having long since ended.

Ginny glances down at her wrist, a gold bracelet – her coming of age gift from her parents – glinting in the moonlight. She knows what her answer will be and thinks he knows too, but she gives him the courtesy of thinking about it before looking to him to answer.

“No, Harry. Not yet.”

She knows the hardest thing he’s needed to adjust to since the end of the War has been the concept of time. She knows that there’s never been a happy medium for him. It either drags on with no end in sight, or rushes past much too quickly for his liking.

But they have time now, and she’s determined to help him find that happy medium, to show him that they have time enough to pursue their own individual paths and dreams. His path will take him to Auror training any day now, while hers is leading back to Hogwarts.

 

“I thought you might say that.” he says with a small shrug, sliding his hand easily into hers. “Something about not being ready, right?”

“Well that, and can’t you just hear Mum going on about us being too young?” Ginny grins, and Harry laughs at her fairly accurate impression of Mrs. Weasley that follows.

“I had to ask.”

“You could keep asking, you know. I might change my answer.”

===

He asks her again the following Christmas, thinking his timing might be better. Graduation is far behind her and Quidditch is on hiatus for the holidays.

She gives him the same answer. “No, Harry. Not yet.”

Harry thinks, as he sits in a chair in the study of Grimauld Place, a bottle of butterbeer in his hand and a book on Stealth and Disillusionment open on the desk in front of him, that she might just be making him wait for her as she had waited for him.

He knows that he’ll wait for her as long as he has to. He just doesn’t want to.

The room is suddenly bathed in a bright light as the flames in the grate turn an emerald green color and Ginny spins gracefully into the hearth and steps out, dusting the ashes off of her cloak and sweeping the ash on the hearthrug neatly back into the fireplace with a wave of her wand.

“Hey,” he greets her, marking his place in the book and shutting it. He wasn’t concentrating on it much anyway. He gives his wand a slight twist, conjuring a butterbeer for her.

She wanders slowly around the study, picking up the butterbeer as she goes before sitting gracefully on the sofa in the corner. “You left in a hurry. Mum wanted me to make sure you’re alright.”

“I’m fine. Really. I just have a long day of training tomorrow.”

Ginny nods over her butterbeer and surveys him for a moment. “I know you’re disappointed, Harry. But we’re no more ready now than we were a year ago. Some things are worth the wait, you know. There’s time, we don’t need to rush into this.”

Harry moves from the chair behind the desk and sits beside her on the sofa. He tucks her hair behind her ear and pulls her to him as he lays a kiss on her temple. “I’m disappointed if only for the fact that somewhere along the way I lost the ability to be patient. I want everything right now.”

She laughs lightly, curling up against him. “One day you’ll ask me again and you’ll get a different answer.”

===

But Harry doesn’t ask her again, though not because he doesn’t want to. Part of him just doesn’t want to hear “no” and “not yet” again. But the other part is beyond either of their control. He’s been in the field more in his first year as an Auror than he has behind a desk, and those rare administrative rotations even more rarely coincide with any break Ginny might have.

But they somehow find themselves with one such break at the end of July, allowing for a proper birthday celebration, complete with the usual dinner at the Burrow in which Mrs. Weasley once again outdid herself and the newest Weasley addition, little Victiore, somehow manages to steal the spotlight.

Harry smiles contently as he and Ginny say their goodnights and wander out into the orchard, hands clasped together, quietly enjoying the calmness of the night until Ginny stops, tugging just slightly on his hand. Harry stops and turns to her, making a note of the moon reflecting in her eyes and somehow making her hair even more vividly red.

“Everything okay?”

She nods, cocking her head to the side slightly. “Yeah, just thinking about something.”

“And what’s that?”

“About how one day there’d be a different answer.”

He doesn’t pull his eyes away from hers, he’s too focused on the hard, blazing look behind them that he’s seen oh so many times before, and feels her arms sliding up around his neck.

“Ginny …” he starts but stops as she gives her head a slight shake, gives him a small smile and leans up until her lips are firmly on his, her fingers curling into the hair at the nape of his neck. And it amazes him that something so simple can merge the gaps of space and time while sending his head spinning, and he doesn’t want it to end. But it does, as she slowly pulls her lips away from his, never taking her eyes off of him.

“Marry me, Harry.”

===

He never said yes, and he never really had to; Ginny knew all along that he would never say no.

He stands now in the orchard with her, the oranges and browns of what can only be a perfect autumn day complimenting the vividness of her hair and the ivory satin of her gown. He takes her hands into his as golden rings erupt from the wand of the small wizard at the front of it all, bonding him to her and her to him for the rest of their lives.

And he realizes what he had been too young to realize even those short few years before, what she had always been saying. That life and love are always worth the wait, and as he loses himself in her warm brown eyes, their entire lives stretching out before them, he knows that there is time enough for them to have absolutely anything they want.


End file.
